Racist teaching won't end soon

The educational role of UNWRA the United Nations Works and Relief Agency that funds and staffs the schools in the Palestinian refugee camps established by Egypt in Gaza and by Jordan in the West Bank deserves urgent attention.

I wonder what a former head of UNWRA, who once said that the agency's biggest asset was its success in education, would make of UNWRA's educational activities in the Middle East today.

Palestinian children study from textbooks purchased by UNWRA, with partial funding given by the EU to the Palestinian Authority. These textbooks blatantly promote anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiments. Palestinian children are being brought up on a steady diet of hate and are taught that Palestine extends from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea (in other words, that the State of Israel does not exist). UNWRA schools host training camps that instruct children in kidnapping, bomb manufacturing and martyrdom. UNWRA allows its food warehouses to be used as munition dumps and a terrorist organisation the PFLP now openly controls the UNWRA workers union.

When these shortcomings were pointed out recently to current UNWRA Commissioner General Peter Hansen, he promised to look into these matters. We shouldn't hold our breath. This is the same Hansen who accused the Israeli army of killing hundreds of Palestinians and burying them in mass graves.

So it would be naive to expect that Hansen or UNWRA will rush to change their textbook policy.

Yanky Fachler,

Jocelyn St,

Dundalk.